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How To Meal Prep For A Road Trip

If you’re planning a road trip – and with the holidays coming up, you probably are – packing a cooler bag with your meals and a few snacks to keep you going is your answer to staying on track. But what to pack? To get the lowdown on how to meal prep for a road trip, we stopped by Fitmark Ambassador Amanda Meixner’s blog, MeowMeix, where she put the Fitmark Shield to the test.

An habitual meal prepper, Amanda blogs frequently about new and daring menu plans. As part of the Beachbody team, she’s learned a lot about fueling the body and what it means to train hard and eat according to her activity level. She told us:

I’ve always been a workout junkie! It wasn’t until I graduated college that I really got into meal prepping. When I started my job on the social media team at Beachbody back in 2013, I quickly realized that nutrition was a key component to my overall health and fitness. As I incorporated more weight training into my routine, I realized I needed to up my protein intake and pre-made salads just weren’t cutting it. With my insane work schedule, I found that cooking my meals in bulk on Sundays was the easiest way to stay on track and eat properly all week. Over the years, I’ve found new ways to optimize my meal prep and I love sharing my tips with the online community!

For this road trip, the meal prep is quick and easy to put together. Amanda says when you’re first starting out, that’s the best way to go. So let’s take a look at the kind of foods you need to pack for a 3-day road trip.

It all starts with a menu plan and a shopping list, then it’s off to the grocery store. Amanda told us that

I usually take about an hour to grocery shop and then 2-3 hours to meal prep, depending on whether it’s a buffet style, simple meal prep or if I’m portioning my food out a bit more or trying new recipes.

Two to three hours to plan, shop and prepare your meals might seem like a lot of time and too much of a commitment for some people. Is it really worth it? It seems like a lot of work when you could just grab something healthy from a restaurant. Here’s what Amanda told us:

Why Bother with Meal Prep?

There are few things about meal prepping that really sets me up for success:

1) Meal prepping helps to ensure that I’m not hungry throughout the day and I always have healthy options on hand.

2) Meal prepping allows me to have full control over my portions, food sources, and how much oil and sodium, or what types are seasonings are added to the food I’m eating. Even if you’re buying healthy food, there are plenty of places that can overdo it on the salt and oil. I’d rather leave out the guesswork and make sure I know how my food is cooked.

When you first start out on your own meal prep adventure, try to keep it as simple as possible so it’s easier to track your carbs, proteins and healthy fats, and stay within your calorie limit for the day. Here are some more meal prep tips from Amanda:

Meal Prep Tips

Write out what you’re going to eat for the week THEN write your grocery list.

Don’t grocery shop on an empty stomach!

Don’t be afraid to start small! Even just lunches and snacks can be a big help.

Start simple. Don’t over complicate things right out of the gate. Stick to some of your simple favorites you can cook in bulk.

Invest in extra food containers and a cooler bag like the Shield to put your food in. Having the containers to put my meal prep in is actually super motivating.

Buy low sodium seasonings. It’s an easy way to spice up your food without having to do much! Flavorgod seasonings are a go-to of mine.

Pick a schedule you can stick to & try to force yourself to stick to it for 3-6 weeks. Once you do that, it will start to become a habit and you won’t even think twice about skipping your meal prep!

Having your food prepped in advance is the key to staying on track! With my bright pink Fitmark Shield staring me in the face, I have no excuse to skip my meal prep! I really do find it so motivating to have something to put my food in and it’s a nice reminder that I have to get moving on my meal prep. I love how big the containers are and the extra pockets. I also love the deep food containers that come with the bag. You can fit A LOT of food in each container.